The Gotham Roguesby
Chris Dee

The
Bigger Man

Puzzles. Gears. Clockworks. All Kittlemeier’s memories
of his grandfather centered around some kind of puzzles or mechanical systems.
He remembered the cramped attic room his grandfather called a workshop, with a
cardboard box in the corner full of ancient radios, broken clocks and carved
wooden boxes whose scratched metal backs attached with funny-looking screws.
The high point of each visit would be when his grandfather picked something from
the collection and gave it to him to “fix.”

He would open it up and peer into the mysterious gizmos
inside, having no idea how any of it worked, to see what he could figure out.
Sometimes it was easy: he didn’t need to know what a loose wire did; it was
enough to know that it wasn’t supposed to be loose… or frayed… or that a gear
wasn’t supposed to be missing a tooth… or jammed with the body of a dead
cockroach. It was only when a careful look didn’t reveal anything so obviously
wrong that the real problem-solving began. That was the challenge Kittlemeier
liked best: running the pad of his index finger ever so gently against the edge
of a spoked wheel; applying the slightest bit of pressure to see how it would
turn, and how that movement would affect the wheel beside it; pressing down
every so lightly on a spring or gently lifting the chain that pulled on a tiny
metal weight to see what that set in motion—it was wonderful! Discovering these
miniature clockwork worlds, these elegant man-made ecosystems of balance and
movement, weight and counterweight, where each little piece would interact with
the next and conceivably affect one far down the chain…

Kittlemeier shared his customers’ view of the goliath
called Bane. Gotham was a delicate and beautiful mechanism, and Bane broke
it. He didn’t break “Batman.” He broke the balanced and graceful clockwork
of a Gotham City that the natives had working exactly the way they liked it.
Kittlemeier had been as offended by the disruption as any of his clients, and as
gratified when everything returned to normal. He would have been appalled to
learn Bane had returned if he’d seen it on the evening news. Seeing him
across the street from his shop was… was not a sentiment Kittlemeier knew
how to express in words. The English options: shocked, horrified, aghast,
sickened, and revolted lacked the visceral kick implied when his father said
erschyttert. Unfortunately, because his parents liked to talk privately in
front of him, he was never taught the nuances of the language and he wasn’t
really sure if erschyttert conveyed his insides convulsing with disgust.

The hulking, sweaty luchador had not sought Kittlemeier’s
services during his first appearance in Gotham, so it didn’t seem likely that he
was coming in for a suit of clothes. Assuming the worst, Kittlemeier had
hurried into his backroom and bitterly regretted his decision to test Joker’s
various SmileX dispensers with helium. If he had even a single capsule of the
stuff on the premises… Instead, he had razor-tipped playing cards, cat claws and
batarangs that all seemed equally useless, requiring physical skills Kittlemeier
lacked to use properly. In his last frantic seconds, he spied the palm unit
he’d used to program Riddler’s question mark.

The bell on the shop’s front door sounded and Kittlemeier
snatched madly for the device and shoved it into his vest. If Bane wasn’t
coming in for a costume or a gadget, it looked like a cry for help would be the
best Kittlemeier could manage.

“Home.” Selina had seen the exhaustion take hold as soon
as he spoke the word. The autopilot took over, and as the Batmobile sped
towards Bristol, she felt more than saw the density shift happening in the
driver’s seat. Most of the inner circle were used to seeing it the other way:
Bruce Wayne encounters some nugget of information that’s meaningful to Batman,
his eyes darken a little, jaw stiffens just that much, and his whole body seems
to become a bit denser. The imaginative could almost see the outline of the
mask appearing on his face, and Selina, her body would hum whenever she felt
those waves of intensity that represented “Batman” to her for so long.
Seeing—or feeling—Batman in Bruce Wayne was a thrill.

The reverse usually made her sad: “Batman” checking out for
the night, leaving only an exhausted shell of Bruce wearing the batsuit. She
loved Bruce as much as his dark alter ego; it wasn’t his appearance that
saddened her. But when he was this depleted, she wanted to take care of him a
little—which was absolutely verboten as long as Batman was in the picture.
There he sat, silent and still, watching the city speed by through the
windshield, none of the fire that normally burned behind the silence. She could
feel it, feel its absence, and the right thing to do was nurse him a little,
pamper him a little, “fuss” as he put it. But she couldn’t because he
was Batman and Batman was a jackass. He couldn’t just accept what she wanted to
give him, what would be good for him, and what down-deep he wanted as much as
she did. Jackass.

So she’d let him make the log entry when they reached the
cave, even supplied a few details about Gina’s undercover mission when he asked,
and then she ‘went to make cocoa’ in the chem lab. She returned, not with a
steaming Wayne Tech mug but with his kimono from the costume vault.

He kicked, as always. Said he had ‘pushed through’ much
worse than this.

She tilted her head, looking as much as possible like a
confused kitten.

“Bruce, you’re putting me in an impossible position,” she
said wearily. “Bed has to happen. Now, if you don’t want to get on board with
this, I can fight you or I can tempt you—both are among Kitty’s favorite
pastimes, as you know. But the thing is, I’m tired too and both of those are
work. So why don’t we just agree that you come to bed now, and in the morning,
I’ll tell you who engineered the Gardner Museum heist.”

“Very funny,” he graveled.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Selina answered, quoting an
old line of his in her imitation of the Bat-gravel.

Silence reigned in the cave for a full thirty seconds.
Then…

“You win,” he said.

Selina took it as a victory. The truth was, Bruce honestly
couldn’t tell if she was joking about the Gardner or not, and that alone
convinced him he was too tired to continue functioning as Batman.

Like most plants, Poison Ivy thrived in sunlight. Morning
had dispelled most of the doubts that plagued her during that sleepless night,
but one hung on like a particularly stubborn weed: Harley.

The idea of Harley as a victim was too foreign for Ivy to
really grasp. It was the insight of a man who started out a heroic crusader and
had the change to villain forced upon him. To him, it was a given that a
normal, non-criminal life was superior and desirable. To Ivy as a Rogue by
choice, it didn’t compute. She wasn’t capable of seeing “Harley Quinn” as a bad
thing; Harley Quinn was the persona that attracted and fascinated her. So she
completely muddled the warning Harvey had tried to give her. She decided Harley
might feel a loss of identity, as the role of “Joker’s girlfriend” was now being
played by someone else. Seeking to lay that fear to rest (Harv had meant well,
poor dear, but he was only a man), she had tapped Harley on the knee as soon as
the train exited the Kanigher tunnel. Two minutes’ conversation would settle
it, and then she could relax and enjoy her day in Philadelphia.

Except the two minute conversation was anything but
relaxing. Faked interest in the music Harley was listening to on her iPod
produced the announcement that it was “Lady Gaga” (whoever that might be) and an
invitation for Ivy to listen. Ivy only listened to music when she played it for
her plants, and the relentlessly energetic sounds coming out of Harley’s
earpiece would probably have her babies shedding leaves, but once again, Ivy
faked it. The music wasn’t horrible, but it was anything but relaxing. It
thumped, creating an odd techno-club soundtrack under her Pagliaccia questions
and Harley’s answers. By the end of it, there was no doubt in Ivy’s mind that
Harley saw parallels between herself and Susannah Pelacci that went far beyond
wearing tassels.

“And then there was the mess with Selina’s ‘wedding,’”
Harley said, making quotation marks with her fingers. “The story was always
supposed to end with Puddin’ and me getting married. I know you didn’t hear any
of it, because you were busy in back while I distracted the salesgirls. But at
all those bridal shops we visited, I had such an elaborate plan for the wedding,
and since I was there, y’know, pretending to be the bride, I got ta tell the
salesgirls all about my plan, and they all thought it’d be so wonderful…”

Ivy ground her teeth as Harley’s run-on sentence ran on.
She had done this, she had. She had unknowingly put Harley on the exact
same path as Susannah Pelacci, visiting all the same bridal boutiques. She
suppressed a shudder as she thought of the bleakness she felt that day,
listening in from the back room as Harley described her dream wedding. Never had
her obsession with the Joker seemed such an utterly insurmountable obstacle. It
was said that plants could break through anything, and there were enough
instances of tree roots breaking through rock and concrete, you could deceive
yourself into believing it was true. But it wasn’t. There was a limit.
Boulder yes, mountain no. And Joker was a mountain. What Harley thought of as
a celebration and culmination of all her hopes, Ivy saw it as the depressing and
inevitable final scene of an epic tragedy—and the coup de grace for any hopes
she might have harbored.

Then it ended, on the same terrible day (in Harley’s view,
the same glorious one in Ivy’s.) Susannah and Harley both had their girlish
dreams for that perfect wedding to their perfect man (Ivy nearly
gagged) shattered at the same time, in the same place…

“I’d been planning that ceremony for years, and instead I
find out that it ain’t even on Mistah J’s horizon. Heck, it ain’t even on his
horizon if you had a telescope. What a joke. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

This kinship with Susannah seemed to confirm all of
Harvey’s fears, however imperfectly Ivy understood them, so Ivy decided to
reassure her. They embarked on a day of sightseeing and touristy amusements:
the Reading Terminal Market “The guidebook said they had good candy here. And
soft pretzels, that’s like an institution in this city. That and cheesesteaks,
and I doubt you’d eat one of those— Oooo, Amish people!” then pushing
through throngs of people on their lunch break. “I love the Amish. Or wait,
maybe those are Mennonites.” Paying the was-she-Amish-or-Mennonite girl in a
bonnet. “Have a bite. Just don’t eat the nubs, those are my favorite parts.”
The Mutter Museum of “medical oddities” which also had Einstein’s brain on
exhibit. Which made them think of Nigma and led to an extended mutual giggle
fit—something Ivy hadn’t experienced since she was ten—right there in the middle
of the museum. “Another part of the anatomy that men are all too overconfident
of,” she gasped finally. Harley started making the “It was this big” fish story
gesture, and they were off again… They got thrown out before they made it to
the Mutter’s prize-winning medical garden. It was a magical afternoon, capped
off by an early dinner at a pleasant trattoria in Philadelphia’s South Street,
which retained much more of its Italian flavor than Gotham’s Little Italy. A
magical day…

Which Ivy thought she had stage managed beautifully until
they reached the row house where the two goons Harley had christened “Mario” and
“Luigi” said Mollatova lived. Then Harley burst into tears.

Muscles creaked as Bane flexed his fingers again… He
couldn’t understand this Kittlemeier, not at all. A man of very rare and
valuable skills who did not shrink from using those skills in the service of
deadly men. His clients were the most dangerous and unstable in the city, and
ratting them out to Falcone, even under torture, would be signing his own death
warrant. He must know that—yet Bane detected not a hint of gratitude for
bringing him out of that danger into the safe haven of the 29th
Street warehouse.

Bane hadn’t snatched the old man for gratitude, of course.
He was just puzzled by the lack of it.

“You know what men like that do when you know something
they want,” he said. “Break the fingers one by one, or clip them off at the
knuckle for every question you don’t answer. A man like that, he doesn’t
think. He sees himself as the biggest dog around. He doesn’t stop to think
that whatever he can do to you now is nothing compared to what men like Riddler
or Penguin will do you to you later.”

And still there was not a suggestion of anything but
contempt coming from the little gadgeteer.

“And what kind of man is you?” Kittlemeier asked finally.

Bane was intrigued—not by the question itself but the
thought behind it.

“Speak, that I may know you,” he quoted. “Very good,
señor. You hear me use a phrase more than once, ‘a man like’ this or that,
and you note it. ‘What does this tell me about the man standing before me,’ you
ask yourself. This is the kind of cunning you must have to survive with the
sort you work for. To displease one like Joker or Riddler would be a fate worse
than death, si?”

“No,” Kittlemeier said simply. “They is all ‘displeased’
at some time or others. Usually when they hears the price. Sometimes when they
wants it tomorrow and it takes week to makes.”

“Then why aren’t you dead?” Bane asked, a burst of genuine
curiosity shorting out his anger at having his theory contradicted.

“And what would thats accomplish?” Kittlemeier asked in
exactly the same words he’d answered Joker’s sole attempt to get a price
reduction at knife-point. “Unless they wants to be making all the chattering
teethes and exploding question marks themselves. They kill mes, they threaten
to kill mes, or they just breaks the rules and gets banned from store, is all
same result.”

“Not to you, surely,” Bane noted.

“What is you stupids? We no talk about me, we talk about
them. To Rogue, what it is to them is all there is, is all they sees.
They no want to make their own next time, they behave.”

Bane had to think about that. Finding he had no answer and
feeling he really must say something or lose face under the gaze of those
bizarrely unafraid birdlike eyes, he returned to the original question.

“You asked what kind of man I am. I’m the kind who
appreciates one like you,” he said generously. “In war, it’s often necessary to
destroy the enemy’s resources, but it’s far better to take them for yourself if
you can. Either way, your enemy is deprived of his advantage, but this way, you
have it to use against him… And if the resource is an item of rare value, you
have escaped the karmic sin of removing it from the world.”

And still a glare of contempt. Bane simply couldn’t
understand it.

“Ah, I begins to see,” Kittlemeier remarked after a short
pause. “So whats is it you wants?”

Bane massaged his knuckles thoughtfully…

The Baldwin Express: Philadelphia-to-Gotham was a much
different experience than Gotham-to-Philadelphia had been. The Harley Crisis
was dispensed with quickly enough. Harley had demonstrated the same blind,
stupid lunacy—that was really the only way Ivy could think to describe it—the
same blind, stupid lunacy that enabled Joker to turn her in the first
place. This time in reverse! She had never caught on that there were no tender
feelings behind Joker’s wooing of Dr. Quinzel, but their perfect day playing
tourist in Philadelphia—which Ivy had engineered from the very best of
intentions—that Harley viewed as calculated manipulation. She saw it as a last
trip to the park with a dog you’re about to get rid of, a pity fuck for the guy
you’re about to break up with, a…a… last caress of the petals for a rose you’re
about to snip! Ivy was able to dispel that ridiculous fear as soon as
Harley managed to explain why she was crying. Harley was feeling great now!

But Ivy felt she could do with a little sobbing.

The very idea that being kind to Harley, asking
where she wanted to go instead of dictating the itinerary—the very idea that it
was seen as such aberrant behavior in Poison Ivy that there had to be some
nasty motive behind it? Having fun with her friend was an anomaly to be
explained… it was a harder blow than that 4 a.m. realization that most people
didn’t like her. The saving grace of that was that Harley did. And
Harley—liking her—still thought her capable of that. In Joker’s indifference,
Harley saw buds that would one day blossom into her dream wedding. In Ivy’s
real attempt at affection, she saw root rot. It was a lot to process. Or it
would have been if Ivy had been able to give it any thought. Instead, it had
sunk into a subconscious canker while she dealt with this latest development:

“I’ve never felt this kind of instant attraction to
anyone. From the first time I saw your picture, not the one Falcone gave me but
years ago in the newspaper, and that was in black and white! And then there was
that piece on television, so much better because it was in color. But even so,
no photo or video does justice to the wonderful color of your skin…”

It was quite appalling.

Ivy wasn’t sure how she’d feel about greening a lesbian—she
wasn’t even sure she could do it, at first. She hadn’t even tried to
green a woman since her first weeks discovering her pheromone abilities. The
first attempts on women didn’t work so she’d focused on men where it did. Then
she learned the effect on men was based on their sexual orientation, not their
gender: gay males were as impervious to her control as women had always been.
The logical conclusion was that gay women could be greened in the same way that
straight men could, but it was only a theory. She had never actually tested it
out.

Until Nigma came to her with this Mollatova mission, she
hadn’t really wanted to. The thought of using her pheromones on a woman
bothered her in a way that greening men did not. Men were such useless
tripods. Knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, most of them, who thought with their
genitals and created endless complications for the rest of the world. She
didn’t need to rationalize greening men; they deserved it. She didn’t feel that
way about women, other than their regrettable belief that Ivy was wrong about
plants. And lesbians, well, the fact that they didn’t find men attractive was
another point in their favor. Even if they didn’t have a proper respect for
plants, they got it right as far as their own species…

“And then there was that A&E Biography about you. I
remember I was going to be out of town, so I DVR’d it to watch later—I can’t
THINK why I didn’t keep it! It would be so great to watch it with you right
now, and you could tell me which parts they got right and which are wrong…”

Appalling.

“You could tell me the real story behind the true stuff.
It would be so amazing to get it straight from your lips. And I just love your
voice…”

Harley said it must be because the communication center in
a woman’s brain is larger than a man’s, and because women process
epinephrine differently. Ivy’s pheromones did supercharge the
root physical attraction producing a flood of hormones in her brain that
manifested as a powerful infatuation with and devotion to Poison Ivy, just as
they’d all hoped. But it also supercharged her communication center, making her
want to express that devotion with a tireless energy Ivy was finding it hard to
take!

“As soon as we get to Gotham, you really
must let me prove myself to you. Any paper mills or lumber yards you want to
make an example of, you just let me at ‘em. We’ll blow them sky high. For the
plants! I’ve always felt like you do about the plants, you know. I just never
realized it before. I didn’t have the, the words to express it. Now I
do… POISON IVY!”

Ivy looked enviously at Harley, bebopping
happily in her seat, the dulcet tones of her Lady Gaga insulating her
from Mollatova’s incessant prattle.

Bane drummed his fingers on his enormous thigh in a poor
attempt to disguise his frustration. He didn’t care what a prisoner like
Kittlemeier thought of him, but his inability to make use of his prisoner’s
talents was beginning to erode the way Bane thought of himself. This was
Gotham, land of the Joker, Riddler, Penguin, the land of the Batman… and
this little man he’d captured was a resource they all made use of. To
take Gibraltar and not make use of the strait? To take Stirling and not make
use of the bridge, the river or the castle? What would that say about a war
lord?

So he tried to appear thoughtful as he wracked his brains
for some idea—some thing this Kittlemeier could make for him. Some
advantage native to Gotham that he could, through this man, appropriate for his
own use...

“Maybe you could give me some examples,” he said finally.
“What kind of things do you make for the lanky straw man?”

“Riddle… me… this…” a menacing yet playful voice sounded
from… somewhere in the rafters. “My first is… No, forget that. What do you
call a… No… Be a… no.” The volume and timbre shifted on the last word as a
long, lean shadow fell across the floor leading back to the modest, non-hulking
form of The Riddler standing in the doorway. “Boy, you’ve got a crap name
there, Bane. One syllable, no anagrams to speak of. Origins: Middle English
bana, slayer. Old Norse bani, death. Old Fisian bona,
murder. Old Saxon, bano murder. High German, bano, murder. One
note. Kind of like you.”

He entered, giving the end of his cane a little twirl
whenever it hit the floor, lending a studied nonchalance to his walk.

“Ja,” Kittlemeier said carefully, watching the space
between the two men, as well as his own path to the door.

“You should get going then,” Eddie said, pointing with the
tip of his cane to indicate Kittlemeier should walk around to his right.

Bane curled the fingers of his left hand into a fist that
cracked his knuckles as he stood, then he did the same with the right.

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Nigma asked as if it was a
particularly easy riddle.

“You should be afraid,” Bane said grimly.

“Of… whom? The coward who had to wear Batman down before
taking him on? The soured underpowered coward that—even packing the old venom
advantage—needed to break us all out of Arkham to tire Batman out before he
could take on a witty-bitty crimefighter half his size? I taunt Batman,
you pusillanimous poseur. I say ‘Come and get me, Big Man.’ And when he does,
I want his best game. That’s how men measure swords, you posing
poltroon. Why on earth do you imagine I’d be afraid of a… fraction of a
man who had to hide behind my coat once already?”

Contrary to popular belief, Bane’s “backbreaker” maneuver
did not literally break Batman’s back. It did inflict a massive herniation to
the L3-L4 disc, causing it to swell until it pressed into the spinal column,
causing temporary paralysis. Something similar was now occurring inside Bane’s
brain. The punch that machismo demanded in reply to this riddling little
cockroach required a slight shifting of weight from his forward left to his back
right. That was all, a slight shift in weight, but there was an obstruction
between that learned instinct and the synapses that would actually move his
muscles to do it. That obstruction took the form of a single word: Guernica.

Bane couldn’t have said why at the time. He just knew
this… thought was swelling in his head, pressing inexplicably but undeniably
into his ability to speak or move: What kind of courage did this little man
have? To a man like Bane, being called a coward was beyond insult, beyond
obscenity. But it was hard not to feel it—Delivered like this, from this
colossally, inhumanly, incomprehensibly brave man—it was hard not to feel
it as a blow of absolute truth.

“Mr. Kittlemeier and I will be leaving now,” Riddler said
evenly. “Word has it you’re not a muscle-bound imbecile. If that’s true, you
should be leaving too. Get out of Gotham and never come back. If you don’t…”
The pause lasted for only a heartbeat, during which the body of Edward Nigma
seemed to grow a shade denser, a shade thicker, perhaps even a shade taller. “I
will break you.”

The warehouse where Bane held Kittlemeier was at 120 East
29th Street. A triumphant Riddler had escorted him as far as the
corner of East 31st when they encountered—a triumphant Riddler.
Nigma 1 high-fived Nigma 2 before morphing into Matt Hagen’s favorite headshot.
Then he reached into his neck and pulled out the small earpiece by which the
real Eddie had been feeding him his lines. He held it towards the Riddler’s
gloved hand, but Eddie stepped back with a ‘no thanks’ gesture.

“Sorry,” Matt said as the little gray-brown droplets
quivered in place before breaking free and jumping up into his wrist. “You spit
into the mic,” Matt mentioned.

“Sorry,” Eddie said with a grin.

Again, they high-fived.

An astonished Kittlemeier thanked them both, related a few
details of his ordeal with Bane, and thanked them again. Matt bowed, and Eddie
made the formal introductions. As a shape-shifter, Hagen had no need of a
costume or gadgets, so they’d never met. But Kittlemeier wanted to express his
gratitude and he offered both of his rescuers “a little something on ze
houses.” Matt thought for a minute and started to describe the one challenge of
his nightly routine: the way a body needed to sleep each day, his needed to
‘mush out’ as he put it. He liked to unclench all his shape-shifting
muscles—somewhere dry where there was no danger of being rained on—and let his
clay relax into its natural unshaped form. He didn’t like doing it in a
bathtub; he could never completely relax in anything with a drain, besides which
porcelain was cold, hard and had unpleasant connotations. Beds and carpets were
better, psychologically and physically, but they had fibers. He hated
fibers. It made ‘getting up in the morning’ an unnecessarily itchy business.
Wood was almost as bad. “It’s more absorbent than people think.”

Eddie smiled to himself. The episode confirmed the natural
affinity of the Theme Rogue, and underlined Bane’s status as a wannabe, outsider
and misfit. The interloper had not been able to come up with a single use for
Kittlemeier’s talents, while Matt Hagen came up with an idea after two minutes’
thought.

Rather than go straight to the Regal Laundry hideout,
Kittlemeier had them stop at a Hungarian restaurant he knew “for a little lemon
schnapps.” He had the owner bring a metal box he kept behind the bar, withdrew
a rather spiffy looking tablet and stylus, and started sketching out ideas for
Matt as they sat and drank. Eddie, remembering the vodka hangover, opted for
club soda. As he watched, he thought of Kittlemeier’s suggestion, years ago,
that he could make small ‘kits’ of puzzle boxes and other gear, which could be
stowed in any number of non-lair locations throughout the city. Riddler never
went for it, and Eddie learned over time that Kittlemeier had made the same
suggestion to Selina, Jervis and Harvey, who also refused. Eddie always assumed
it was just a sales pitch, trying to push some new thing. It was rather amusing
to see Kittlemeier himself making use of the idea no one else wanted, and while
Matt made little suggestions for his proposed basin-bed, Eddie thought back over
other Kittlemeier pitches. He wondered how many other stellar ideas he’d
rejected from the Rogue-mind who had been among them all this time and they
never quite recognized.

Guernica. In his mind’s ear, Bane heard the old Jesuit
saying the name. He was reading from a volume on the Spanish Civil War. “The
bombing of Guernica was not a military objective. One of the first raids in the
history of modern military aviation on a defenseless civilian population, the
object of the bombardment was the demoralization of that population...” Bane
had latched on to that word like a newborn to a mother’s teat: de-moralize. He
studied the account time and again, for instinctively he felt that was
the key to victory in all battles. An enemy that will fight can always win.
The history books were full of impossible victories by the outmatched and
outnumbered. Even the dead had an awful way of inspiring the living to strike
back and avenge them… But a foe who gives up poses no such threat.

So he’d picked the first instance he encountered as his
model, studied and deconstructed it: April 26, 1937, the bombing of Guernica on
Market Day. It was not a military objective. The object was to de-moralize.
To strike a blow of such force it knocks the will from your enemy. Bane
had labored over that definition. For a time he substituted “hope” for “will,”
to strike a blow of such force it knocks the hope from your enemy… Then
he tried “confidence”… but he was never really satisfied with either. Now he
understood why. It was that idea of an external blow knocking the
will/hope/confidence from a man like a blow to the plexus robs him of breath.
What he’d felt in the face of the exceptional, colossal and inhuman courage of
the Riddler was internal. A gaping hole inside him, an emptiness that had
gravity and mass, sucking like a vacuum.

A gaping hole inside him that had the weight and mass of a
burned out star and made it, quite simply, impossible to move.

Selina had been tired, but she wasn’t exhausted like
Bruce. She had dozed, but now she lay there watching him sleep. She caressed
the scar of an ancient cat-scratch, kissed a favorite spot on his shoulder, and
as the minutes passed, let her love for him, her hatred of Bane, and her anger
at Eddie swell into a force uniquely feminine yet uniquely feline…

There was no longer any studied control in his rubbing of
knuckles. There was only the spastic twitching of individual fingers. An
ecstatic gleam in psychotic eyes. And the twisting of a mouth filled with the
bitter tang of adrenaline.

Bane had always seen his scheme to wear Batman down as the
epitome of his genius. Yet there was no question that breaking Gotham’s Dark
Knight had failed to bring him the stature he deserved. Those who should have
bent their knees to him had absolutely failed to do so. He beat the man who
beat all of them, yet all but the Catwoman had failed to render him the homage
he had earned.

If this was the reason… But no, this Riddler of all
men—this Riddler was one who fought with his mind, he above all should
appreciate that strategy was part of beating the Batman. It didn’t—it
shouldn’t—diminish his glory. Doing everything possible to weaken the
enemy before you face him was the way to win…

If the goal was simply to beat him. But beating Batman was
to have been a means to an end—to shock and awe Gotham into
submission—and that end had certainly not been achieved. Even the little Jewish
tailor didn’t revere his accomplishment…

The little Jewish tailor.

Was it possible Carmine Falcone had a better
understanding of— No.

So Kittlemeier didn’t fear the Rogues, so he wasn’t the
oppressed slave Bane had assumed, so what? That was a minor failure of
understanding. Both Kittlemeier and his customers were aware of his worth, so
what? Who would guess madmen were capable of such cognizance? Not being able
to use the old man’s talents, that’s what he should be worried about.
Being able to assess the landscape, recognize and exploit its weaknesses, these
things are paramount in a war. Not the failure of every Rogue except Catwoman —
the failure of every Rogue and their fucking watchmaker—to pay a little
fucking homage—to show a little fucking fear—to fucking show a little fucking
respect.

Inside Bane’s massive chest, his heart pounded hot waves of
rage into his arms and legs, moving him to stand and pace, to clench his fists. The
throbbing, pulsing, fuming waves heaved up his chest, seeming to crash against
his teeth and twisting his mouth into a snarl.

He knew he was thinking like Falcone. “Fucking this,
fucking that, fucking fuck the other thing.” He was better than this. He was
Bane. He wasn’t some fucking junkyard dog, he was…

One note, that riddling cockroach said.

Sekhmet, the original cat-woman, was a goddess of war in
Ancient Egypt—and a force of destruction that made other war gods look like
teething children. Yet she was also a protector, a healer, a loving wife and
mother. Selina saw no contradiction in that. It was the nature of a cat to be
deadly, and the nature of a woman to protect those she loved.

Middle English bana, slayer.

She let the pad of her middle finger move softly along
Bruce’s knuckles. He could put so much power behind a blow, and he’d mastered
more martial arts than he bothered to count. He didn’t need protecting, but
neither did Sekhmet’s sons, Nefertem the lion god and Mahees the lord of… she
stifled a chuckle at the thought… Mahees was the Egyptian Lord of Punishment on
those who violated “Maat” or Justice. He was, essentially, Egypt’s Dark
Knight.

Old Norse bani, death.

Gotham’s Dark Knight was not a god. He was a mortal man
who had been hurt once already. And tonight, he’d come to her gargoyle and
raised the memories from that awful time…

Old Fisian bona, murder.

Tonight he told her the monster who did it was back. The
last time, Bane had to stage a prison break to wear Batman down… Now he’d come
to Gotham with a war already in progress between the Rogues and the Mobs.

Old Saxon, bano murder.

Selina Kyle’s love was something fierce and feral.

High German, bano, murder.

She loved Bruce. Bane hurt him. And Edward Nigma was
leading forces in a war that was exhausting him